Short Stories

Dixie and Earl went to the grocery store in their home town of ESPNtucky. It was called ESPNtucky because you can get mystical vibrations in the air there. It would allow one to plug into what was called the “Collective Unconscious” and was a very powerful place.

Earl had always supported Dixie on her endeavors. This year she had been workin’ on her special sauce called Hillbilly juice. She was like some kind of sorceress because everyone who would sample her Hillbilly juice tapped into that “Collective Unconscious” real fast. Earl was amazed.

They played with the recipe for a whole month givin’ out samples. They came up with creative names like, “Hillbilly juice #1”, “Hillbilly juice #2”, and so on. Dixie had been playin’ with the Hillbilly juice #9 one day while she was writin’ up new labels and accidentally wrote, “HillyBilly Juice”. Earl though it was so special and creative they should keep it – So that one is secretly Hillbilly juice #11 with a special name for extra magic and creativity.

Maybell over at the country store couldn’t help but notice the change around ESPNtucky after a while because everyone stopped scrappin’ over stupid stuff and people started BBQin’ together and one whole set of feudin’ families called a truce all ‘cuz of the Hillbilly juice. People even started painting and talkin’ about art stuff. It was just weird. But… the people were happy and that was all that mattered.

Dixie said it must have been because of the watermelon which was one of the secret ingredients. “Helps take the lactic acid out of the muscles”, she said. Whatever that means. She just blend it right up in the blender and leave it unstrained, pulp and all.

Anyways, Maybell bought it right up. Dixie didn’t mind since it allowed her to focus on her creativity in the kitchen.

And Earl used it when he was wrastlin’ chickens – Chicken run really fast, so it really more like chasin’ chickens. He liked to go play baseball in the field over yonder also which would make anyone all sweaty on a hot summer day – so a nice cool tall mason jar full of HillyBilly juice always did the trick afterwards. “Cool and refreshin’” is what he’d say and he’d pop a squat in the ol’ green and white aluminum lounge chair in the front yard.

We liked sittin’ in the front cuz you can see all the goin’s on around town and be all neighborly and say “Hi” to folks and stuff.

Earl loved to reminisce about all kinds of stuff that never even happened and poke fun at Dixie. Dixie of course would just deny it all and tell Earl to go put a sock in his ESPN. Earl and Dixie often tapped into that ESPN and bounce about in the “Collective Unconscious” randomly when he wasn’t teaching her about the physics of how to throw a curveball or change up – and they’d laugh at each other when some bits of their ESPN overlapped serendipitously. Then they’d just blame it on the Hillbilly juice.